menuclose
    Instant Valuation

    PRIVACY POLICY

    What does this Privacy Policy cover?

    At Arun Estate Agencies Ltd (Arun Estates) we are committed to ensuring that your personal information and privacy are protected. This privacy policy explains how we use the personal information you provide to Arun Estates.

    References to “Arun Estates”, “us”, or “we” relates to all brands and subsidiary companies of Arun Estate Agencies Ltd (Reg No. 2597969). This includes:

    • Wards (sales & lettings)
    • Cubitt & West (sales & lettings)
    • Douglas Allen (sales & lettings)
    • Pittis (sales & lettings)
    • Fine & Country - Canterbury, Newport & Loughton (sales)
    • Mortgage Matters Direct (MMD) (mortgages & insurance)
    • Home in One (insurance administration)
    • Arun Land & New Homes (sales)
    • Home in One Financial Services Ltd (regulatory compliance)

    Links to our “Privacy Policy” and “Internet and Cookies Policy” are available on all of our websites and will be regularly reviewed and updated as necessary to keep you accurately informed.

    How we use your data

    In the general course of business, Arun Estates will process the personal information you provide to us, primarily to assist you in achieving the purpose for which you provided it to us. This includes the selling, buying and renting of property and associated services of arranging a mortgage and/or insurance, providing legal services and/or lettings management services, as relevant and necessary to your needs.

    Any personal information that you provide to us will only be processed in accordance with The Data Protection Act 2018 & The General Data Protection Regulations 2018 UK – collectively referred to here as DPA 2018.

    When processing your data, one of the following legal bases will always apply. We have allocated the types of processing to the most relevant legal bases header below however, in many cases, more than one legal basis will apply.

    Legal Obligation - necessary for compliance with our legal obligations

    This includes (but is not limited to) all laws relating to residential estate agency. In particular Estate Agents Act 1979, Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Act 2007, DPA 2018, Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs), Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008 (BPRs), Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, Consumer Rights Act 2015, Competition Act 1998, Landlord & Tenants Act 1985 (as amended by the Housing Act 1988), Housing Act 1996, The Housing Act 2004, Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, Deregulation Act 2015, Energy Act 2011, Money Laundering Regulations 2007, Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, Bribery Act 2010 and Modern Slavery Act 2015.

    From time to time we may be asked to provide your data to assist in government department investigations e.g. Police, HMRC, Local Authorities. We will always check to ensure that such requests are legitimate and have relevant DPA 2018 exemptions before sharing information.

    To comply with the relevant Money Laundering Regulations stated above, we use Law Firm Services Ltd T/A Minerva and Credas Technologies Ltd to perform online Electronic Identity Verification (EIDV) and due diligence checks. Our sellers and buyers are required to engage directly with the software and take and upload their facial images and the requested personal identification and proof of address(es) documents plus proof of funds documents for buyers. The outcome of EIDV will be shared with our conveyancing partners and/or Mortgage Mattes Direct if you have instructed them to provide their services to you.

    As an alternative to EIDV, we operate a manual identification process which requires you to provide personal identification, proof of address(es) and proof of funds documents to a member of staff for our records or certified documents if you have not been met face to face. Online due diligence checks are carried out via Smartsearch, who retain a record of the search data and may share this with third parties in accordance with their Privacy Policies. Such searches leave a soft trace only on credit files and do not affect our customer’s credit ratings.

    The Landlord & Tenants Act 1985 obliges us to provide tenants with their landlord’s contact details within 21 days of receiving a written request. We will endeavour to contact landlords, as a courtesy, before providing this information but we are unable to refuse to provide it.

    Contractual - necessary for the performance of a contract between you and us or pre-contractual requests made by you

    This includes all contracts our customers enter into with us or our business partners, including (but not limited to) all forms of property marketing agreements (including Homewise), landlord, tenant and tenancy agreements, the arranging of mortgages and insurance products etc.

    If you have agreed to market your property or buy through our Fine & Country named branches, your contact details and other necessary information will be provided to Fine & Country, who are an independent company, in accordance with our contract with them.

    If you have agreed to market your property or buy using the Modern Method of Auction, which is operated by I Am Sold (IAS), your contact details and other necessary information will be provided to IAS, who are an independent company, in accordance with our contract with them and to facilitate the sale or purchase.

    Some examples of where it would be necessary to process information to perform a contract would be:

    • Marketing properties for sale or let
    • Facilitating agreement completion and electronic signing via Blacksmiths Technology Ltd T/A Finch
    • Marketing properties on Social Media
    • Introducing buyers or tenants
    • Using your contact details to arrange viewings and negotiate offers
    • Progressing sales and tenancies to a successful conclusion
    • Applications to purchase Shared Ownership properties requires us to obtain extensive and detailed information which we provide to the relevant Housing Association, and their appointed mortgage specialist if applicable, for them to consider your application
    • Referencing tenants, and guarantors where required
    • Carrying out Right to Rent checks via Let Alliance
    • Facilitating tenancies between the parties, including guarantors
    • Progressing mortgage applications with lenders to a successful conclusion
    • Providing re-mortgage services
    • Processing applications for and administration of selected insurance products with external providers e.g. Legal & General, Flatfair and Uinsure. It may be necessary for policy holders information to be shared with third parties acting on their behalf.
    • Arranging Lettings Management support through external providers e.g. Toogood Inventories, DB Lettings, PSH Inventories & JPM
    • Supporting Accounting processes through Barclays Bank, Sage software etc.
    • Supporting I.T via external software providers and their contracted processors, as necessary to support our business needs

    Legitimate Interests - processing information for the benefit of you, us and other parties on which your transaction depends. It will not be processed on this basis if it would be detrimental to you to do so.

    This primarily involves providing you with information about additional services we offer within Arun Estates that will help you to achieve your property aims.

    Some examples of this are:

    • If you wish to buy a property and require a mortgage, we may invite you to meet with one of our in house mortgage advisors
    • If you advise us that you are interested in newly built properties, we may pass your details onto relevant New Homes Developers
    • If you are selling or buying a property, we may invite you to speak to one of our conveyancing panel firms
    • If you are looking for a property to buy, we may offer to assist you with selling your property
    • If you are selling your property, we may offer to assist you with buying a new property
    • If you are aiming to buy a property to let, we may discuss our lettings management service with you
    • If you are a landlord, we may send you details of any new investment opportunities we think may be of interest to you
    • If you have a property which is not attracting high enough offers, we may discuss the possibility of letting in the short term until the market improves
    • If we have arranged a fixed rate mortgage for you, we may contact you towards the end of the fixed rate period to discuss the most attractive re-mortgage rates for your benefit
    • If you have contacted us in relation to your property needs and aims, we may send you informative material e.g. newsletters, market update emails etc.
    • Where Landlords have opted into using Ovo Energy to consolidate third party services (council tax, utilities etc), we will provide the Tenants’ contact details to help them with transferring these services. Tenants can subsequently choose whether they continue with Ovo Energy or not.

    Information will only be processed by Arun Estates where it is in the legitimate interests of both the company and its customers or where consent has been obtained (see below). Some examples are:

    • Providing seller’s contact details to surveyors to arrange survey appointments when a sale is agreed or otherwise necessary
    • Sharing information essential to progressing transactions and understanding delays
    • Providing tenant’s contact details to contractors to arrange repairs
    • Providing tenant’s contact details to external providers to carry out periodic inspections and check out reports
    • Providing landlords with limited information about tenants from the outcome of their referencing checks in order to assist them in making a decision whether to enter into the Tenancy.

    As with many large organisations, communications by telephone may be recorded and/or retained for monitoring purposes and improving our customer service standards.

    In the case of electronic communications, Arun Estates may process the information provided by customers in an existing business relationship or one that has recently ended or one that is currently being negotiated. Otherwise we will contact you by post and include a method for opting out of future mailing.

    Consent - where you have given your consent for us to process your information in a particular way for a specific reason.

    This includes every form of data processing that is either not referred to above or is and consent also applies. Where you have provided consent, you may be contacted by carefully selected and professional third parties in relation to a product or service which may be of interest to you. This may include (but is not limited to) referrals to our conveyancing panel firms operated by Martin Tolhurst Solicitors, MoveWithUs/Simplify, Direction Law/Strive or Medway Law. It could also include referrals for the provision of additional legal services (e.g. wills) and consent from landlords for referrals to energy or media providers e.g. Ovo Energy, Virgin Media etc.

    The data you provide may be used for any or all of the following reasons:

    • To contact you in order to carry out your instructions to us or to assist you with your property related needs and aims e.g. Homewise, IAS etc.
    • To provide you with information, products and services which you have requested from us
    • To help you with information, products and services connected with and relevant to your property needs and aims and, in your interests, e.g. mortgage, conveyancing services, lettings, insurance services, property management services etc.
    • To provide customer support e.g. out of hours phone services, website live chat facility etc
    • To process payments necessary to facilitate the services required
    • To notify you about changes to our services

    The information we use is normally restricted to the information you provide to us. This includes (but is not limited to) your full name, postal address, email address, telephone numbers, date of birth, demographic information, identification, proof of address and proof of funds documents.

    We will not process your personal data outside of Arun Estates other than as described in this Privacy Policy or without your verbal or written consent.

    Should you wish to withdraw your consent at any time, please contact us using the details provided below.

    Third parties

    We will never sell your data to any third party.

    As Data Controller, we may instruct third parties to act on our behalf as Data Processors. We will only process your data with such companies, strictly in accordance with contractual arrangements between us and them to provide specific services on our behalf. Such contracts commit those third parties to ensuring compliance with DPA 2018 in relation to the protection of your personal information and privacy.

    Examples of this are;

    • IT companies who provide software tools and support for our databases, websites and other business systems.
    • Business software development and digital data collection companies to offer you a secure way of providing us with your personal information, perform research and analysis so that we can develop and implement initiatives to improve our services to you

    These include; Software Craftmanship, Starberry Limited, One Trust, Matterport, Dashly Limited, Mortgage Brain Limited, Silver Lining, The Valpal Network, Acre Platforms Ltd, Acaboom and MRI Real Estate Software

    IT developers and service providers may operate inside or outside of the UK but are contractually bound to uphold the obligations of DPA 2018.

    We may also process your data with third parties to assist you with your property related needs and aims across sales, lettings, conveyancing, insurance and mortgage services as explained above. This could include sharing your details with appointed underwriters.

    Outside of these scenarios, the information we process with third parties offering support services will be restricted to property details only and will not include personal data. Examples of this are the companies who operate the ‘live chat’ facility on our website, Yomdel, and Orca Ltd & JPM who handle our ‘out of hours’ telephone calls.

    We may use your data for internal analysis to monitor and improve the services we provide.

    In the event of you escalating a complaint to The Property Ombudsman redress scheme, we are required to provide them with a complete record of our dealings with you and they may utilise your contact information for their compliance mornitoring/survey processes.

    We also source information which is already in the public domain e.g. HM Land Registry data and information obtained with your previous consent to other third parties as provided by “Twenty CI” and “Twenty EA”.

    Security of Your Data

    We will securely retain all paper files containing your data in cabinets and within offices or central storage facilities, which will be locked when unattended.

    Electronic data is securely held and protected by anti-virus software and firewalls. Our servers are subjected to regular penetration tests to check that they are securely protecting your data. Data held on laptops is password protected and subject to the same anti-virus software and firewalls.

    Personal data is held on iPads and mobile telephones through the Acaboom App, which facilitates business relationships with customers who have requested to use our services. The App is deactivated from devices immediately if lost, stolen or if staff leave our employment.

    As with any company, we are unable to provide absolute guarantees due to the ever-increasing sophistication of criminal activity. However, we will do everything reasonably possible to ensure that your data is protected.

    When visiting properties and taking images or videos, we will endeavour to exclude images of individuals, documents or other items which might be considered as personal data. To assist our staff in achieving this, please ensure that you remove everything that you do not wish to be seen in our marketing material.

    How long we will keep your information for?

    Arun Estates will retain your data for as long as is necessary to provide you with the services requested until your property needs are met and to comply with our internal and regulatory requirements. This will vary according to the extent of your relationship with us. For example:

    Data relating to an inactive customer e.g. a person whose property is not currently on the market (whether appraised by us or not), or who is not actively viewing properties will be retained for a period of up to 2 years from the time we last had communications with you, depending on whether your property needs have been met or not.

    Data relating to a prospective buyer/tenant e.g. a person who has been introduced to one or more properties, either by way of viewing appointments or by giving verbal/written property information, but who is not involved in a transaction or any other business activity through us, will be retained for 2 years after the last related property has been withdrawn. This is in order to ensure a complete record of activity against each corresponding property.

    Data relating to a seller/buyer/landlord/tenant who has entered into a contract or is involved in any business transaction with us will be retained for a period of 7 years from the end of the business relationship.

    Data relating to mortgage customers will be retained for between 6 years and the lifetime of the mortgage, depending on the retention policy which was in place when the mortgage was arranged.

    Data provided by customers raising service concerns will be retained for a period of 7 years.

    In line with the legal and contractual obligations detailed in this Privacy Policy, including the associated data retention periods, the right to be forgotten cannot be exercised before the stated data retention periods have expired. However, we will not retain your data for any longer than is necessary, it will be held securely during our retention periods and deleted promptly when they expire.

    How to contact us if you have concerns

    Should you have any queries in respect of this Privacy Policy or our use of your data, we would welcome the opportunity to resolve your concerns directly in the first instance. Please email us at: data.protection@arunestates.co.uk or telephone on 01702 540802.

    The Data Controller is Arun Estate Agencies Ltd.

    If we are unable to resolve your concerns, The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) are the appointed regulators for DPA 2018 and can be contacted by email at: www.ico.org.uk or by telephone on 0303 123 1113.

    [Rev 03.2024]